C H A P T E R
3
Energetics of the Solid Earth:
Implications for the Structure
of Mantle Convection
Jason P. Morgana and Paola Vannucchib,c
a
SUSTech, Shenzhen, China
b
University of Florence, Florence, Italy
c
National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics, Trieste, Italy
1. Introduction
Although the Earth’s present-day surface
motions are now well known, the overall
structure of mantle convection and the links bet-
ween surface plate motions and deeper mantle
flow are not, remaining uncertain after decades of
investigation. Both downwelling- and upwelling-
linked structures are now clearly visible in mod-
ern seismic images of the lower mantle.
A
3000 km-broad N-S circumglobal “ring” of a
higher-than-average seismic wavespeeds has
been recognized since the first global models of
non-radial seismic structure, being found beneath
regions with long-term plate subduction. Broad
mantle plumes are now also clearly visible in
modern seismic images of the lower mantle; these
plume structures narrow significantly above

1000km and appear to be continuous pipe-like
structures that connect the lowermost D00 region
above the core-mantle boundary to the astheno-
sphere that underlies surface lithospheric plates.
Furthermore, plume structures tend to be
Dynamics of Plate Tectonics and Mantle Convection 35
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-85733-8.00001-9
concentrated within two roughly antipodal
slow-wavespeed vertical cylindrical regions of
the lower mantle—superplumes; with these slow
vertical cylinders being surrounded by the N-S
great-circle-like ring of fast wavespeeds associ-
ated with regions experiencing long-term plate
subduction. Several plumes appear to even be
associated with ultra-low-velocity zones directly
above the core-mantle boundary at the plume’s
base. However, seismic imaging is always limited
in imaging convective flow in that it can only
show structures with differing wavespeeds, or
lower-resolution patterns of seismic anisotropy,
or even lower-resolution spatial variations in
density.
Present-day viscous dissipation-generated
heat in the mantle can be estimated from the grav-
itational energy release from the current plate
subduction. We find this heat source is of the
same order (
13 TW) as radioactive heat genera-
tion within the mantle. We also see that if there is a
lower-viscosity upward return flow to colder,
higher viscosity downwelling associated with
Copyright # 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
36 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
plate subduction, then viscous dissipation is
likely to focus in the most resistive bottlenecks
of the return flow circuit formed by relatively
low-viscosity plumes that link a low-viscosity
basal D00 layer characterized by strong lateral flow
to another low-viscosity asthenosphere layer at
the base of the tectonic plates. Current ideas about
the conductivity of the Earth’s iron core based on
ab initio calculations imply that mantle heat sup-
plied from the Earth’s core is much larger than the
consensus estimates of
4 TW around 2000,
e.g.,
15–20 TW. This rate of core heat transfer
is possible because plate-tectonics-linked sinking
slabs can efficiently cool parts of the deepest man-
tle and core. Furthermore, the Earth’s early core is
likely to have formed hotter than the Earth’s man-
tle because the sinking crack-like propagation of
iron blebs is likely to transform a large fraction
of the descending iron’s gravitational energy
release into viscous-dissipation heat within the
deforming iron. This would be the predicted
behavior for sinking fractures filled with molten
iron that sink through the crystalline mantle to
segregate mantle from core, analogous to how
water-filled cracks descend to the base of a glacier.
Consequently, the fraction of gravitational energy
release associated with core segregation is prefer-
entially concentrated into core material, which
can easily lead to >1000K of early core superheat
with respect to its overlying Hadean mantle
adiabat.
Together, these seismic and energetic
observations hint that the Earth has a less-visible
low-viscosity upward counterflow to the well-
known downwelling associated with plate sub-
duction. In the high-viscosity lower mantle,
subduction-linked downwelling occurs at speeds
of <
1–2 mm/yr. This
3000-km-wide great-
circle ring of slow downward flow is associated
with two antipodal axial spokes of twice as fast
but still very slow large-scale upward flow. In
addition to this background pattern of large-scale
lower mantle circulation, upward counterflow to
plate subduction preferentially takes material
from a hotter D00 thermal boundary layer at the
core-mantle boundary. This material rises in the
lower mantle at speeds of
10 cm/yr through
roughly fifteen
400 km diameter plume con-
duits in the high-viscosity lower mantle, with
plumes tending to concentrate in (and further
heat by lateral heat conduction) two antipodal
“superplume” regions where slow deep mantle
upwelling is taking place. Above the highest
pressure perovskite phase transition of a
garnet-rich mantle lithology, which occurs at

900 km depths, the plume and surrounding
mantle viscosities decrease by a factor of
250,
which leads to a reduction in the diameter of
the plume conduit to
100 km or less. Once rising
plume-material reaches the base of the litho-
sphere, it can no longer easily rise, and therefore,
ponds and flows laterally to form the well-
known low-viscosity asthenosphere layer that
exists between
100 and
300 km depths. Since
radioactive heat production in the mantle has
waned over time, the relative importance of core
heat loss in supplying heat to the mantle has cor-
respondingly grown. At present, roughly 2/3 of
the mantle’s loss of
35 TW of heat through the
Earth’s surface is being replenished by core heat.
The basal heat supply from secular cooling of the
core has caused mantle convection to slow much
less over the Earth’s evolution than would be
anticipated by the mantle’s five fold decrease
in internal radiogenic heat production from U,
Th, and K decay over the last 4.5 Gyr. With this
in mind, let’s take a closer look at the observa-
tions that motivate this basic scenario.
2. Seismic observations on the structure
of global mantle flow
Seismic evidence of plate subduction in the
upper mantle provided key observations
(Wadati, 1935) to support the initial hypothesis
that subduction downwelling is linked to plate
tectonics (Isacks et al., 1968). In contrast, seismic
imaging of structures linked to the upward
 2 Seismic observations on the structure of global mantle flow
counterflow to plate subduction was not suc-
cessful until the 21st century (e.g., Montelli
et al., 2004; French and Romanowicz, 2015;
Koppers et al., 2021); likewise for imaging how
subducting slabs deform and spread out in the
lower mantle (e.g., Lekic et al., 2012; Shephard
et al., 2017). Recently, a broad seismological
consensus has emerged on key aspects of the
seismic structure of upwelling and
downwelling-related structures in the mantle
(see Romanowicz (2021) for a recent general
overview). The following features are now rela-
tively well-imaged:
(1) About 10–20 well resolved
400-km-wide
vertical plume structures have been imaged
in the lower mantle (cf. French and
Romanowicz, 2015). Perhaps the best-
imaged example lies beneath the Pitcairn
hotspot (Fig. 1A). Vertical plume structures
underlie many of the Earth’s most
volcanically productive and long-lived
hotspots (e.g., Hawaii, Iceland, etc.).
Although in many cases the plume
structures imaged with global tomographic
imaging techniques do not extend upward to
the base the lithosphere, we must remember
that narrower
 200 km diameter plumes
cannot be imaged by global techniques
because of wavefront healing effects on long-
distance seismic wave propagation, so that
any narrower upper mantle parts of
upwelling plumes would become
“invisible” in global tomographic images
(Nolet et al., 2006). Higher-resolution
regional seismic array observations have
been able to image narrower vertical
structures in the uppermost mantle, e.g.,
researchers have imaged vertical upper-
mantle extensions of plumes beneath Eifel
(Ritter, 2007), Yellowstone (Nelson and
Grand, 2018), Iceland (Allen et al., 1999), and
Hawaii (Wolfe et al., 2009) that connect to
regions of surface hotspot volcanism.
37
(2) Thin (
5–10 km high), small (
100 km
diameter) extremely slow-wavespeed
ultra-low-velocity zone (ULVZ) patches are
sometimes found just above the core-mantle
boundary at the base of several major mantle
plumes (see Koppers et al., 2021; Yu and
Garnero, 2018).
(3) The lower mantle has a roughly
3000-
km-wide, pole-to-pole, circumglobal “ring”
of higher wavespeeds (see Fig. 1B) (Lekic
et al., 2012; Dziewonski et al., 1977) associated
with regions of persistent plate subduction
over at least the past
320 Myr (Le Pichon
et al., 2019), perhaps much longer (Evans,
2003). This ring roughly outlines the area of
the past hemisphere-spanning
supercontinent of Pangaea (Le Pichon
et al., 2019).
(4) The lower mantle also has two broad
(
4000 km in diameter) vertical superplume
structures centered beneath the equatorial
South Pacific and its rough antipode beneath
the South Atlantic/Africa (see Fig. 1B and C)
(Lekic et al., 2012; Courtillot et al., 2002).
These two low-wavespeed anomalies are
centered at the two antipodal axes of the 90°
distant circumglobal ring of fast wavespeeds
that is associated with long-term plate
subduction. Seismologists often call these
superplume structures large low-shear-
velocity provinces (LLSVPs), with Kevin
Burke suggesting (Torsvik et al., 2016) that
the Atlantic superplume be called Tuzo and
the Pacific superplume called Jason in honor
of the two scientists who pioneered the idea
of volcanic hotspots (J. Tuzo Wilson) and
their link to mantle plumes (W. Jason
Morgan).
(5) Plume upwelling structures are
concentrated in superplume regions (e.g.,
Courtillot et al., 2002) and largely absent
above the great circle ring of fast
wavespeeds in the lower mantle (Courtillot
et al., 2002).
FIG. 1 Seismic images showing structures associated with mantle upwelling and downwelling. (A) Whole mantle depth
cross-section through the Pitcairn mantle plume in the SEMUCB-WM1 tomographic model. The small globe shows the loca-
tion of the vertical cross-section line. The core-to-asthenosphere connection of the Pitcairn plume is clearly visible, as are the
fast-wavespeed locations associated with downwelling in the N-S circumpolar ring at the left and right sides of the lower
mantle. (B) Travel times of shear-waves sensitive to lower mantle structure, here binned in 5° caps and plotted at the turning
(S) or bounce points (ScS) or midpoints of the path along the core-mantle boundary (Sdiff ). This is the “data signal” that drives
the observed faster-wavespeed circumpolar ring and slow-wavespeed superplume regions in seismic inversions. (C) The fast
circumpolar ring and superplume regions in the SP12RTS seismic model (Koelemeijer et al., 2015). Various definitions of the
superplume regions (SMEAN ¼ 1%, SP12RTS ¼ 0.1%, lower mantle slow cluster region (Lekic et al., 2012)) are also shown.
Panel (A) from A. Koppers et al., 2021. Mantle plumes and their role in earth processes. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 2, 1–20; Panel (B) from
U. J. Manners, University of California, San Diego, San Diego (2008); Panel (C) from P. Koelemeijer, A. Deuss, J. Ritsema, 2017. Density
structure of Earth’s lowermost mantle from Stoneley mode splitting observations. Nat. Commun. 8, 15241.
 3 Mantle energetics: Roles of gravitational energy release and viscous dissipation
(6) It has been asserted several times that the
Tuzo and Jason superplume structures are
associated with high-density anomalies in
the lowermost mantle (see Koppers et al.,
2021). This inference is a possible mechanism
to explain the anticorrelated shear and bulk-
sound wavespeed anomalies observed in
these regions (Masters et al., 2000). The
inference conflicts however, with
measurements of seismic free oscillations
sensitive to density variations above the
core-mantle boundary. Instead, free
oscillation splitting measurements show no
evidence that superplume structures have a
dense root near the core-mantle boundary
(Koelemeijer et al., 2017). Anticorrelated
shear velocity and bulk-sound velocities
could possibly be explained as an artifact
linked to the neglect of lower mantle seismic
anisotropy in current inversions for shear
and bulk-sound wavespeeds, while it seems
more difficult to discount free-oscillation
splitting measurements that are more
directly sensitive to the density structure in
the region near the core-mantle boundary.
While seismic observations provide clear hints
to help understand the Earth’s deep internal struc-
ture, they give much less information about the
upward, downward, or lateral flow velocities asso-
ciated with the imaged structures. In principle,
seismic anisotropy measurements can provide
information on possible directions of mantle flow.
So far we have learned that the
200-km-thick
slow-wavespeed asthenosphere layer beneath
surface tectonic plates (Ekstr€
om and Dziewonski,
1998; Dziewonski and Anderson, 1981) and the

250-km-thick slow-wavespeed D00 layer at the
base of the mantle (Kendall and Silver, 1996) both
have strong horizontal seismic anisotropy, unlike
the rest of the mantle, which is consistent with
the existence of strong lateral flow in both the
asthenosphere and D00 layers (Stacey and Loper,
1983; Morgan et al., 2013). Before we further dis-
cuss the implications of these seismic findings
for the flow structure of mantle convection, we will
39
first review current constraints on the magnitude
and distribution of the energy sources that shape
mantle flow.
3. Mantle energetics: Roles of
gravitational energy release and viscous
dissipation
When oceanic plates cool near the Earth’s sur-
face, they become denser than the underlying
mantle. This density contrast provides the grav-
itational pull that causes plates to sink when
they subduct. In a highly viscous fluid like the
Earth’s mantle where inertial forces are negligi-
ble, the gravitational energy released from a
sinking thermal density anomaly is completely
transformed into viscous dissipation energy
within the deforming fluid. For example, the
Stokes problem of a sinking heavy ball in a
highly viscous medium can be treated either
as a force balance between the net buoyancy
force on the ball and the viscous resisting force
from the surrounding fluid’s deformation, or as
an energy balance between the gravitational
energy released by the ball’s sinking and the vis-
cous dissipation within the surrounding fluid.
(All slow viscous flow involves viscous
friction—typically called viscous dissipation—
that generates heat as the material deforms.) In
this perspective, viscous dissipation transforms
the gravitational potential energy release from
the rigid sinking ball into heat within in the sur-
rounding viscous fluid. In the Earth’s mantle and
core, this effect is slightly more complicated in
that local heating from viscous dissipation will
always be associated with adiabatic thermal
expansion that simultaneously transforms a frac-
tion of the dissipation-heat back into gravitational
potential energy. This effect is non-negligible,
with an average
19% adiabatic heat-
transformation for the Earth’s mantle and core
(see Morgan et al. (2016) for further discussion).
The above statements can be derived from the
equations for slow viscous flow if we idealize
the mantle as an infinite Prandtl number
40 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
anelastic liquid that is in mechanical equilib-
rium throughout. (Here, the Prandtl number
μCp/k is the non-dimensional ratio of the kine-
matic viscosity μ/ρ[m2/s] to thermal diffusivity
κ ≡ k/ρCP[m2/s], and the anelastic approxima-
tion means that pressure/stress variations are
assumed to be in mechanical equilibrium over
the entire deforming fluid, e.g., transient effects
on the timescale of seismic wave-propagation
are neglected.) Assume that the mantle has a
compressible reference density ρr(z) and a refer-
ence adiabatic temperature Tr(z), where ρr(z) is
given by the Adams-Williamson equation-of-
state for a compressible homogeneous fluid with
an adiabatic compressibility β:
1 dρr
¼ βρr ðzÞg
ρr dz
and dTr/dz ¼ αgTr/CP. If density is assumed to
vary linearly with the difference in deviatoric
pressure p from the Adams-Williamson state
and linearly with differences in temperature
from the reference state, e.g.,
ρðp, TÞ ¼ ρr ð1  αðT  T r Þ + βpÞ
then it is straightforward to derive that the viscous
dissipation in a compressible mantle (1st integral in
Eq. 3) is equal to the gravitational power released
by rising or sinking thermal density anomalies
(2nd integral in Eq. 3) (Leng and Zhong, 2008):
ð ð
 τij ui,j dV + ρr gαðT  T r Þu3 dV ¼ 0 (3)
In contrast, the upward or downward advection
of compression (pressure-linked) density varia-
tions is linked to reversible transformations of
internal p-V power and gravitational energy.
Morgan et al. (2016) discuss the derivation of
this result in detail and then discuss several
thought experiments that illuminate basic differ-
ences between the energetics of top-cooled and
basally heated mantle convection.
Note that even though the above derivation
used a 1-D adiabatic reference state, its key conclu-
sion did not actually depend on this assumption.
For a perfectly adiabatic reference state, viscous
dissipation will be directly linked to the gravita-
tional power release from rising and sinking ther-
mal density anomalies. For a non-adiabatic state,
gravitational energy release from rising or sinking
density anomalies with respect to a non-adiabatic
1-D background density profile will still be
directly linked to viscous dissipation, but it is also
possible to release or store gravitational energy by
changing the horizontally averaged density vs.
depth profile. If the 1-D reference state is subadia-
batic, then changing the reference state toward an
adiabatic one will consume thermal energy as dis-
cussed in Morgan et al. (2016), while if it is super-
adiabatic, then extra stored gravitational energy
will be transformed into viscous dissipation as
the 1-D average reference state changes toward
(1)
a more adiabatic state.
4. Current gravitational energy release
and viscous dissipation in the Earth’s
mantle
(2) A useful application of the above finding is
that it is possible to estimate the current gravita-
tional energy release from subduction, and from
this we can directly estimate the viscous dissipa-
tion rate associated with present-day mantle
flow (Morgan et al., 2016). Perhaps surprisingly,
we will see that this heat source is of the same
magnitude as present-day radioactive heat gen-
eration within the mantle.
The current gravitational energy release from
sinking slabs,
11–14 TW, is relatively well-
constrained. It is the product of the slabs’ weight
anomaly Δρg, their mean downward flux, and
the mean depth h to which cold slabs sink within
the mantle, i.e., the gravitational energy release
from subducting slabs is
Δρgh multiplied by
the well-constrained current volume flux of sub-
ducting slabs (see Fig. 2). A subducting slab’s den-
sity anomaly is directly proportional to the heat
that the oceanic lithosphere has lost while cooling
near the Earth’s surface. Mantle heat loss through
cooling ocean lithosphere is also easy to estimate
 4 Current gravitational energy release and viscous dissipation in the Earth’s mantle 41

ere
s ph oc
ea
o n
ith ic
ll lit
ta Mantle h

en

os
rad

in
cont
Qmantle Hmantle

ph
nt

e
co

re
weak D’’
ridge
Qcont
Qcore hm

hc Core

W
e
Pl o ak
um
i e li
Ver y
slab

high v Mantle Qocean

iscosity rad
cont
Qmantle
w Hmantle
eak e
trench asthenospwheaekr
? )
Qcont
Qcore

Mantle Heat Losses

Qocean : Oceanic Lithosphere Cooling –29 TW
cont
Qmantle : Cooling through Continents –5.9 TW
Total –34.9 TW

Mantle Power Inputs

rad
Hmantle : Power from Mantle Radioactivity 8.6±4 TW
14% transformed by PV work into gravitational power ~1.2 TW
Qcore : Power from Core ~15-21 TW
18% transformed by PV work into gravitational power ~3-4 TW
Mantle Power Generation and Consumption
Gravitational Power released by sinking slab 11-14 TW
Gravitational Power released by plume ascent ~7 TW
Gravitational Power generated by top-cooling of mantle: 11.5 TW
Gtop = Qtop (α g hmean / Cp ) = 0.33 Qtop
Gravitational Power generated by core heatflow (0.18Q core )
rad
and mantle radioactivity (0.14Hmantle ): 3.3-5.5 TW

FIG. 2 Cartoon showing the current modes and amounts of heat loss and energy supply for the Earth’s mantle. All heat
fluxes and energy production/loss rates are in units of TW (1012 W). Dense subducting oceanic slabs contain significant grav-
itational energy. This energy is released into the mantle as viscous dissipation, at a present-day rate comparable to the energy
released by radioactive decay of U, Th, and K within the mantle. The Earth’s core also supplies more heat to the mantle than
that released by radioactive decay. See Table 1 for more details on mantle and core energetics. Modified from J. P. Morgan, L.
Ruepke, W. White, 2016. The current energetics of Earth’s interior: a gravitational energy perspective. Front. Earth Sci. 4.
  pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
(Parsons and Sclater, 1977; Stein and Stein, 1992) time, q mW=m2 ¼ 473= age½Ma (Parsons,
because the total heat removal from the oceanic 1982). This approach yields a value of 29 TW
lithosphere is directly measurable due to its effect (Parsons, 1982; Sclater et al., 1981; Mareschal
on the deepening of the ocean seafloor through and Jaupart, 2011) (cf. Fig. 2 and Table 1).
42 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection

TABLE 1 Variables and definitions used to estimate present-day mantle energetics.

Power
Power pW/kg
(TW) (10212 W/kg
# Variable Comment/derivation (1012 W) of mantle)

1 Gravitational acceleration g 9.8m/s2 (assumed uniform through mantle although not strictly true)

2 Mantle height hm 2.9  106m

3 Continental lithosphere thickness hc
4 Slab density ρ0, ρ(z)
5 Plate consumption/creation rate Λsub
6 Mantle or core heat capacity cP
7 Mantle or core thermal expansion α

1.75  105m
PREM values, ρ0¼ 3300 kg/m3 (shallow mantle density),
ρ(z) 5000 kg/m3 near bottom)
2.7km2/yr (NUVEL1a (Demets et al., 1994) value)
Mantle: 1167Jkg1K1 (Dulong-Petit value of PRIM mantle composition)
Core: 840Jkg1K1 (Nimmo, 2007)
   
Mantle: αðzÞ ¼ α0 1  a hmantle ¼ 3  105 1  23 z (Birch, 1968)
depth

 
Core: αðrÞ ¼ 1:25  105 1 + 0:36 rCMB
r
(Labrosse, 2003). Keeps uniform
Gruneisen parameter with PREM P and S wavespeed distribution.
8 Average mantle or core thermal expansion αmantle  2:2  105 K1 (Birch, 1968) (volume averaged)
α αcore  1:65  105 K1 (Labrosse, 2003) (volume averaged)
9 Present-day slab flux Φ0 (estimated equal 1.2  1024kg/Ga ¼ 3.8  107kg/s (¼ 2.7 km2/
to present subduction mass flux) a*133 km*3300 kg/m3 ¼ global spreading rate * mean plate thickness at
trenches * slab density)
[uses #5 for 2.7 km2/a and #14 to estimate trench plate thickness]
10 Mantle depth dependent slab flux ΦðzÞ ¼ d ¼ [0  1] (d ¼ 0 means all slab material reaches the core-mantle-
 
Φ0 1  d hdepth ¼ Φ0 ð1  dzÞ boundary) [uses #9 for Φ0]
mantle

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
11 Net heat loss Q from seafloor of a given age (3  1013 ageðMaÞ J=m2 ) (Parsons, 1982)
12 Viscosity ν ¼ (η(Pa  s)/ρ(kg/m3))
13 Viscous dissipation rate per kg φ_ ¼ ν_ε2
14 Rate of mantle cooling by cold slab Qslab ¼ Φ0 ΔTcP where ΔT is the average (29) 7.07
injection slab temperature deficit ΔT ¼ (Parsons,
[present-day rate of mantle cooling by slab 29  1012 W=Φ0 cP  700°C 1982)
injection estimated equal to present-day [see text]
net heat flow lost through oceanic plates]
15 Energy from gravitational work by sinking W slab [for 2.3 [d ¼ 0.5]
slabs ð1 a ¼ 2/3] 2.8 [d ¼ 0.0]
ρ0
¼ Φ0 ΔTα0 ghm ð1  azÞð1  dzÞdz 9.2
ρðzÞ [d ¼ 0.5]
0
ð1 11.3
α0 ghm ρ0 [d ¼ 0.0]
¼ Qslab ð1  azÞð1  dzÞdz
cp ρðzÞ
0
[uses #7, #10, #14]
 4 Current gravitational energy release and viscous dissipation in the Earth’s mantle 43

TABLE 1 Variables and definitions used to estimate present-day mantle energetics—cont’d

Power
Power pW/kg
(TW) (10212 W/kg
# Variable Comment/derivation (1012 W) of mantle)

slab ¼ Φ0 ΔTα0 ghm

W ad
16 Additional gravitational work from [for
adiabatic cooling (balanced by additional 8h i 9 a ¼ 2/3]
ð1 >
> 1  ða + dÞz + adz2 >
>
slab cooling of the same amount) ρ < = 2.2
dz 0
ρðzÞ >
> α0 gz  az >
>
[d ¼ 0.5]
0 : exp 1 1 ; 3.1
cp 2
[d ¼ 0.0]
17 Continental heat flux (63 mW/m2) (Mareschal and Jaupart, 13.1
2011). Area of continental crust is
2.073  1014m2 (Davies and Davies, 2010)
18 Mantle heat loss through continents 28.5 mW/m2 (¼13.1TW  330 pW/kg cont. 5.9
Heat production (Rudnick and Gao, 2003)
with assumed cont. Crust mass 2.171  1022
kg)
19 Net mantle heat loss Sum of continental mantle fraction and 34.9 8.5
subducting slab (¼mean oceanic)
20 The Earth’s radioactive energy production U ¼ 16 4 ppb, Th ¼ 61 20 ppb, 15.8 4 3.85 1
K ¼ 219 40 ppm [see text]
21 Continent radioactive heat production (best estimate is equivalent to 7.2 1.75
(¼radioactive energy production) 34.5 mW/m2) (Rudnick and Fountain,
1995)
22 Mantle radioactive energy production (¼ The Earth’s radioactive energy 8.6 4 2.1 1
production  continental heat production)
[see text]
23 Core energy flux into mantle Estimates based on ab-initio core +15 to +1.2 to +5.1
conductivity implying at least
15 TW of +21
outer core heat conduction along adibat.
[See text]
24 Mantle radioactive energy production Assumes that heat is uniformly produced 0.7 to 0.17 to
adiabatically transformed into throughout the mantle, and a PREM 1.8 0.44
gravitational energy (see also Fig. 2) mantle density structure (14%
transformed)
25 Core energy flux into mantle adiabatically (18% transformed) PREM-based estimate 2.7 to 0.2 to 0.8
transformed into gravitational energy (see Fig. 2) 3.8
26 Gravitational energy replenishment Qtop(ραg(h  hmid)ΔTδz/ΔTδzρCp) ¼ 0.33
associated with cooling at the mantle’s top Qtop ¼ 0.33(34.9TW)
27 Gravitational energy replenishment top ¼ 0.33(8.6 4) TW
0.33 Qrad 1.5 to 0.4 to 1.0
associated with top cooling of the mantle’s 4.2
internal radioactive energy production

28 +3.3 to +4.7

Continued
44 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
TABLE 1 Variables and definitions used to estimate present-day mantle energetics—cont’d
# Variable
Net mantle gravitational energy
consumption relative to “steady-state”
mantle energy production
29 Gravitational energy replenishment
associated with surface heat loss of core
heat into the base of the mantle
30 Net mantle gravitational energy
consumption relative to current mantle
energy production and inflow of core
energy across the core-mantle boundary.
The seismic studies discussed above suggest
that many slabs subduct deeper than 1000 km
in the mantle, and, based on the good correlation
between the geometry of the N-S circumglobal
fast-shear-wavespeed structure just above D00
and the surface locations of recent plate sub-
duction, that at least some slabs reach the core-
mantle boundary at depth hm (Masters et al.,
1996). Here, we parameterize the depth to which
slab material sinks within the mantle by a func-
tion ϕ(z), which is the fraction of slab material
that reaches a depth z (i.e., if ϕ equals 1 at a given
depth, then all slab material reaches at least this
depth). The slab’s mass anomaly also depends
on the depth-dependence of its coefficient of
thermal expansion. Thermal expansivity is
believed to linearly decrease with increasing
pressure (Birch’s (1938) law), so that, at the base
of the mantle, the thermal expansivity is
1/3 its
near-surface value (Birch, 1968). These consider-
ations imply that the stored gravitational energy
released by sinking slabs would be large
(Table 1, Fig. 2), on the order of
11–14 TW, as
they sink to near the core-mantle boundary.
Power
Power pW/kg
(TW) (10212 W/kg
Comment/derivation (1012 W) of mantle)
Lines (15 + 16) plus (24 + 27) ¼ (11.4–14.4) - +14 to
(1.5–4.2) TW. If possible
7 TW of plume +20
gravitational energy release also included, e.g., large

14–20 TW deficit
0.33 ∗ 0.82 ∗ (15  21) ¼ 4  5.7 TW 4 to 0.9 to
Here Qtop ¼ 0.82* (Dziewonski et al., 1977; 5.7 1.34
Le Pichon et al., 2019; Evans, 2003;
Courtillot et al., 2002; Torsvik et al., 2016;
Masters et al., 2000; Koelemeijer et al., 2017)
Lines (15 + 16) plus (24 + 25 + 27 + 28 + 29) +8 to +16 +1.9 to +3.8
(Includes
7 TW of plume gravitational
energy release)
Adiabatic effects will increase the tempera-
ture and density contrast between a downwel-
ling slab and its surrounding warmer ambient
mantle. Because the local adiabatic gradient
dTad/dz ¼ αgT/Cp is a linear function of the local
temperature, warmer ambient mantle will heat
up more during descent along its adiabat than
the cooler slab mantle does along its. (For the
same reason, hot upwelling plumes would expe-
rience larger amounts of adiabatic cooling dur-
ing ascent than would their surrounding
cooler mantle, which will tend to decrease the
temperature contrast between rising plume
material and any surrounding rising ambient
mantle.) Furthermore, while this adiabatic effect
increases the amount of gravitational power that
is released by a sinking slab, it leads to no net
change in total mantle energy—the
30%
depth-averaged loss in internal heat from the
slab’s extra cooling with respect to the ambient
warmer mantle is exactly balanced by an equiv-
alent increase in the gravitational energy release
associated with slab-sinking (Morgan et al.,
2016). However, it does increase the viscous
 7 Mantle heat loss through the surface
dissipation within the mantle that is induced by
the gravitational energy release from subduct-
ing slabs by a further
30% (see Table 1).
This estimate is obviously a lower bound on
the mantle’s gravitational energy release
because it neglects the gravitational power
release from plume upwelling. However, sink-
ing slabs are likely to be
2/3 of the gravita-
tional energy release within the mantle. If
there is an upward return plume flux with
the same mass-flux as that of present-day sink-
ing slabs, and it starts with the same initial tem-
perature contrast with respect to the average
mantle adiabat, then the current gravitational
potential energy release in ascending plumes
would only be of order
6 TW (vs.
11–14
TW) because hot plume material will experi-
ence greater adiabatic cooling as it rises than
does mantle along the average mantle adiabat,
as noted above.
5. Non-hydrostatic internal deflections
store relatively minor amounts of
gravitational energy
Estimates based on observational constraints
of observed dynamic relief indicate that we can
also safely neglect gravitational energy storage
at the top, bottom, and along other internal
density layers within the mantle. For example,
imagine that we have 1 km of dynamic stress-
supported relief on the Earth’s surface, an
amount greater than the upper end of values
consistent with the observed distribution of
seafloor depths that are predominantly influ-
enced by the near-surface cooling of the ocean
lithosphere as it ages. A km of dynamic relief
over the Earth’s surface of area A is associated
Ðh
with stored gravitational energy A Δρgzdz
0 (Parsons, 1982; Sclater et al., 1981; Mareschal
¼AΔρgh2/2 or 5.75x1024 J of stored potential
energy for A ¼ 5.1  1014 m2, the surface density
contrast Δρ ¼ 2300 kg/m3, gravity g ¼ 9.8 m/s2,
45
and h ¼ 1000 m. This amount of stored gravita-
tional energy is only equivalent to storing the
gravitational energy released by
20,000 yr of
global subduction at a present-day-like rate of

10 TW. Even 10 km of global dynamic surface
relief would only store gravitational energy
equivalent to that released during the last

2 Ma of recent subduction. Morgan et al.
(2016) show that observed deflections of the
core-mantle boundary store even less gravita-
tional energy.
6. If upward mantle flow occurs within a
low-viscosity D00 + plume + asthenosphere
circuit, then viscous dissipation will be
concentrated in the highest resistance parts
of this circuit
The actual pattern of viscous dissipation in the
mantle will depend strongly on whether a low-
viscosity flow “circuit” forms within the convect-
ing mantle. The numerical experiments shown in
Fig. 10 of Morgan et al. (2016) illustrate that if a
low-viscosity D00 + plume + asthenosphere circuit
exists for potential upward return flow, then
practically all of the viscous dissipation will be
concentrated within these low-viscosity regions
of the mantle, even though most are far from
the subducting slab. The actual distribution of
viscous dissipation within the low-viscosity path
depends on which part of the circuit (D0 ‘, plume,
or asthenosphere) has the most resistance to
return flow—both pressure gradients and vis-
cous heating will be largest within the most
“resistive” part of the low-viscosity flow circuit.
7. Mantle heat loss through the surface
While the above estimate of 29 TW (Fig. 2)
and Jaupart, 2011) for the mantle’s heat loss
through the seafloor was easy to quantify
because of the well-known relationship between
46 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
seafloor depth and heat flow, mantle heat loss
through the top surface of the continents is more
difficult to quantify. The average continental
heat flow is 63 mW/m2, corresponding to 13.1
TW lost through the entire continental area)
(Mareschal and Jaupart, 2011). However, most
of the heat lost through the continents is pro-
duced by radioactive decay within the continen-
tal crust, so that the mantle’s heat flow through
the continents is significantly less. While near-
surface concentrations of radioactive element
concentrations are fairly straightforward to
measure, it is more difficult to estimate radioac-
tive element concentrations within the mostly
inaccessible lower continental crust. The current
“consensus” estimate (see Table 1) is that
34.5 mW/m2 (or 7.2 TW) of continental heat loss
comes from radioactive heat production within
the continental crust (Rudnick and Gao, 2003),
which implies that the mantle heat flux through
the continents is 28.5 mW/m2 (5.9 TW), in good
agreement with the estimate of Weaver and
Tarney (1984), and also similar to the estimate
of 5.63 TW of Taylor and McClennan (1985).
Higher estimates of the mantle heat flux through
continents of 10.3 TW (Shaw et al., 1986;
Wedepohl, 1994) would imply that steady-state
conductive continental lithospheric roots should
extend deeper than 500 km beneath the conti-
nents, which is difficult to reconcile with seismic
surface wave observations that continental cra-
tonic roots extend to at most
300 km beneath
the surface before they reach a relative low-
wavespeed depth interval (Celli et al., 2020;
Pearson et al., 2021). In summary, our preferred
estimate (Morgan et al., 2016) for the present-
day heat loss from the suboceanic and subconti-
nental mantle is
29 TW +
5.9 TW ¼
35 TW
(Table 1). While this value is 10% lower than
other recent estimates, e.g., Mareschal and
Jaupart (2011) estimate
39 TW and Davies
and Davies (2010) estimate
40 TW (mostly
because they assume that hotspot swells are
associated with an additional
4 TW of surface
heat flow that we do not include), using a higher
estimate for the mantle’s present-day heat loss
would only strengthen our upcoming conclu-
sion that a large fraction of the mantle’s recent
heat loss is supplied by heat flow across the
core-mantle boundary.
8. Radioactive heat production in the
Earth’s interior
Geochemical estimates of the abundance of
radioactive heat-producing elements in the Earth
(e.g., Hofmann, 1988; Hart and Zindler, 1989;
McDonough and Sun, 1995; Palme and O’Neill,
2003), have historically been based on the
assumption that the relative abundances of
refractory lithophile elements (i.e., their concen-
tration ratios) in the Earth and other planets are
the same as in chondrites, the most primitive
class of meteorites, whose composition is thought
to represent that of the nebula of gas and dust
from which the solar system formed. Being based
on the same fundamental assumption, these
estimates of present-day (i.e., after 4.56 Ga of
radioactive decay) heat production are all similar
(5.08–5.17 pW/kg of crust + mantle), and imply
between 19.7 and 20.3 TW of radioactive energy
production within the Earth’s present-day crust
and mantle. (Since the heat producing elements,
U, Th, and K, are highly lithophile, all terrestrial
radiogenic heat production should be in the crust
and mantle, and little heat production is expected
from the core (McDonough, 2005), as we will fur-
ther discuss below.) A more recent estimate of
the Earth’s composition that somewhat relaxes
the constraint of chondritic relative abundances
of refractory lithophile element abundances
(Lyubetskaya and Korenaga, 2007a,b) yields a
20% lower radioactive heat production of about
16 TW.
There is now, however, reason to question the
guiding assumption of the constancy of refrac-
tory lithophile element ratios. 142Nd was pro-
duced in the early solar system by alpha decay
of 146Sm (half-life: 68 million years). As rare
 8 Radioactive heat production in the Earth’s interior
earth elements, Nd and Sm are refractory and
lithophile; hence, if the Earth were a simple
accretion of chondrites and irons, then the
Sm/Nd ratio of the Earth should be chondritic.
In this case, the 142Nd/144Nd ratio of the Earth
should also be the same as in chondrites. This
is not the case; 142Nd/144Nd ratios in all modern
terrestrial materials differ from those in chon-
drites. The terrestrial 142Nd/144Nd ratio is
18 106 higher than in ordinary chondrites.
The difference between the modern terrestrial
value and enstatite chondrites is smaller: only
10 106 (Gannoun et al., 2011). On the other
hand, the Moon and the Earth share the same
142
Nd/144Nd ratio (Boyet and Carlson, 2007;
Caro et al., 2008), implying that the terrestrial
value was fixed before the Moon-forming impact.
There are two possible scenarios to explain
this finding; both involve very early differen-
tiation of the Earth during its accretion, and
the early formation of a basaltic proto-crust
enriched in incompatible elements such as Nd
and, importantly, K, U, and Th. In the first case,
suggested by Boyet and Carlson (2006), this
protocrust became unstable and sank into the
deep mantle where it has remained ever since
(e.g., as the D00 layer). However, since Boyet
and Carlson envisioned this occurring as a con-
sequence of the Moon-forming impact, it is dif-
ficult to see why the Moon and the Earth would
then share the same Sm/Nd ratio. In the second
case, the proto-crust was partially abraded and
lost from the Earth as a consequence of
“collisional erosion” during its growth (Caro
et al., 2008; O’Neill and Palme, 2008a). The final
stages of planetary growth are thought to
involve infrequent, energetic collisions
between large bodies. Between collisions, one
might reasonably expect that a primitive basal-
tic protocrust would form at the surface. Caro
et al. (2008), Caro and Bourdon (2010), O’Neill
and Palme (2008b) propose that a substantial
fraction of this proto-crust was blasted away
in the larger collisions, leaving the nascent
Earth-Moon system depleted in elements that
47
had concentrated in that proto-crust, i.e., the
incompatible elements that include K, U,
and Th.
Using O’Neill and Palme’s (2008b) equations
and values that assume a Sm/Nd ratio 6%
greater than chondritic, the calculated bulk sili-
cate Earth concentrations of U and Th are 12 and
46 ppb, respectively, values that are 40% lower
than those based on the assumption of chon-
dritic relative abundances of refractory litho-
phile elements. Arevalo Jr. et al. (2009) recently
revaluated the K/U ratio of the Earth and
obtained a value of 13,800, somewhat higher
than the earlier “canonical” value of 12,000.
Using this value, Morgan et al. (2016) deter-
mined a K concentration of 166 ppm and a ter-
restrial (¼mantle + continental crust) heat
production of only 11.9 TW.
The terrestrial 142Nd/144Nd ratio is only
about 10 ppm greater than that of enstatite chon-
drites (Gannoun et al., 2011). Enstatite chon-
drites uniquely share several geochemical
features with the Earth, such as their oxygen iso-
topic composition. This has led some to suggest
that they are a better compositional model for
the Earth than ordinary or carbonaceous chon-
drites (e.g., Javoy et al., 2010). The 10 ppm
142
Nd/144Nd isotopic difference implies a 3%
Sm/Nd difference. After matching this compo-
sition with the O’Neill and Palme approach
and the Arevalo Jr. et al. (2009) K/U ratio, the
total present-day terrestrial heat production is
estimated to be 15.8 TW (U ¼ 16 4 ppb,
Th ¼ 61 20 ppb, K ¼ 219 40 ppm). This esti-
mate agrees remarkably well with the indepen-
dently derived 16.0 TW value of Lyubetskaya
and Korenaga (2007a,b).
The above geochemical estimates of radioac-
tive heat-producing elements in the Earth all
lie within the range of a present-day production
of 16 4 TW of terrestrial radiogenic energy.
After correcting for radiogenic energy produc-
tion in the continental crust, the best current esti-
mates imply that radioactive decay within the
mantle is currently producing
8.6
4 TW of
48 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
power. If uniformly distributed within the man-
tle by convective stirring, about 86% or
7.4 TW
is becoming heat, and the rest is being trans-
formed into gravitational power due to the adi-
abatic expansion of the regions undergoing
radioactive heating.
9. The Earth’s Urey ratio and the mantle’s
“missing” energy supply
The above review clearly implies that the man-
tle is currently losing much more energy (
35 TW
heat flow less the gravitational energy created by
the thermal density anomaly associated with top
cooling) than the power being generated within
it by internal radioactive decay (
9 4 TW). Grav-
itational potential energy created by cooling at the
top surface of the mantle is created at the rate
Qtop αgh=CP (Morgan et al., 2016), where Qtop is
the heat flux through the top surface, α is the ther-
mal expansivity at the top of the mantle
(3  105 K1), g is the gravitational acceleration
(9.8 ms2), CP is the average heat capacity of the
mantle (1167 Jkg1 K1) and h ¼ 1292km is the
mass-averaged mid-mantle depth to which a sur-
face mass anomaly would ultimately sink within
the mantle. Table 1 and (Morgan et al., 2016) pro-
vide further discussion on these parameter values
and a derivation of this relation. We see that cool-
ing of oceanic lithosphere
  is currently associated
with a
29 TW αgh=CP ¼ 9.6 TW accumulation
rate of gravitational potential energy, while man-
tle cooling through the surface of continents is
associated with a
5.9 TW(0.33)¼ 1.9 TW rate of
potential energy accumulation, for a net energy
loss associated with cooling at the top of the man-
tle of 34.9–11.5 23.4TW. The mantle’s current
production rate of radioactive power is
8.6
TW, or only 37% of the Earth’s internal energy
being lost by cooling to outer space.
This finding is not new. For example, Zindler
and Hart (1986) called the ratio of the Earth’s
surface heat loss to internal radioactive energy
production the “Urey Ratio,” and noted that the
ratio of internal heat production to surface heat
loss (i.e., the inverse Urey ratio) was on the order
of 0.5 for the then best-accepted geochemical esti-
mates of radioactive energy production within the
Earth. Where does this “missing” energy come
from? Three ideas have been put forward:
(1) It comes from secular cooling of the mantle. In
the next section, we will see that secular
cooling of the mantle can only provide
25%
of this missing heat, on average, over the past
3.5 Ga of the Earth’s evolution.
(2) It comes from a highly radioactive pile at the
base of the mantle. This has always been a
primary geochemical motivation for
imagining that there is a dense highly
radiogenic layer of silicates somewhere in the
lower mantle. There is at best mixed seismic
evidence in favor of this hypothesis (see
above), and, even if the lowermost mantle
now contains the “extra” 11 TW of radiogenic
heat production that would make the Earth’s
original post-accretion mantle chondritic
in composition, this would still leave a
large fraction (
35%) of missing energy
supply.
(3) It comes from the Earth’s core, either due to
high concentrations of radioactive elements,
notably potassium, in the core (which
geochemical constraints suggest would be
highly implausible), or to the gravitational
and latent heat released by the freezing of the
inner core—but this can supply at most
4
TW (Morgan et al., 2016; Nimmo, 2007), or to
secular cooling of the core (Morgan et al.,
2016), which would imply that core cooling
is currently supplying >
15 TW of heat
(maybe even
21 TW of heat) across the
core-mantle boundary.
We will next summarize how secular cooling
of the mantle can supply only
6 TW of long-
term energy release from the Earth’s mantle,
and then discuss how cooling the core by

800–1000 K over the Earth’s evolution may be
the primary source of the mantle’s missing
energy as well as the primary energy source that
drives the Earth’s strong geodynamo.
 10 Secular cooling of the mantle can supply
6.3 TW of long-term power 49

10. Secular cooling of the mantle can

supply
6.3 TW of long-term power

The geologic record of the basaltic products of

Temperature (°C)

mantle melting indicates that the mantle has

cooled by less than 25–50 K/Ga through the past

3.5 Ga (see Fig. 3) (Abbott et al., 1994; Campbell
and Griffiths, 1992; Jarvis and Campbell, 1983;
Herzberg et al., 2010). This implies that the man-
Poten

tle’s energy loss through the Earth’s surface has

been balanced, to within
25–50 K/Ga, by inter-
nally generated energy—radioactive mantle
heating and basal heating from core heat flow.
Mantle secular cooling will release both thermal
and gravitational energy at the rate:
Age (Ga )
 
FIG. 3 Petrological estimates of mantle potential temper-
1:14Mmantle CP ¼ 1:14
  4:04  10 kg
24

ature (TP) for non-arc lavas and komatiites from Herzberg  1167J=kg  K
et al. (2010). The black rectangle at zero age marks their esti- ¼ 5:37  1027 J=K (4)
mate for the range of the present-day potential temperatures
of MORB-source mantle. The diagonal crossed area is their where Mmantle is the mass of the mantle, CP the
range of estimated TP of Phanerozoic mantle plumes. Gray mantle heat capacity (Dulong-Petit limit for a
band corresponds to secular cooling of the mantle at an aver-
age rate of 37.5 K/Ga. Modified from C. Herzberg, K. Condie, J.
PRIM composition), and the 1.14 factor accounts
Korenaga, 2010. Thermal history of the Earth and its petrological for the extra gravitational energy release during
expression. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 292, 79–88. secular cooling of a PREM-like mantle (Fig. 4).

(A) (B) FIG. 4 The fraction of heat release (or con-

sumption) associated with adiabatic contraction
6000 6000 (or expansion) in a PREM-like Earth. (A) Depth-
dependent thermal expansivity of the mantle
(Birch, 1968) and core (Labrosse, 2003) that was
5000 5000 assumed for this calculation (equations given in
line 7 in Table 1). (B) Resulting adiabatic fraction
of transformed heat for a PREM-like mantle and
4000 4000 core pressure and density and the thermal expan-
Radius (km)

CMB sion profile shown in panel (A). On average, this

3000 3000 calculation shows the mantle would transform
14% of internal heating into gravitational poten-
tial energy, the core 29% of its internal heating,
2000 2000 and the mantle plus core together 19% of their
internal heating into gravitational potential
ICB energy. This gravitational energy would be
1000 1000 reversibly transformed back into heat if they
cooled and contracted under pressure. From J. P.
0 0 Morgan, L. Ruepke, W. White, 2016. The current ener-
0 2 4 0 0.2 0.4 getics of Earth’s interior: a gravitational energy per-
−1 −5 Adiaba spective. Front. Earth Sci. 4.
α (K ) x 10
(Expansion)
50 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection

A secular cooling rate of 37.5K/Ga of the mantle
would release 2  1029 J/Ga  6.3 TW of energy.
This is also much too small to be the primary
source of the mantle’s “missing heat.”
11. The core supplies
>15 TW across
the core-mantle boundary
Ab initio material science calculations have
led to the biggest recent change in our under-
standing of the Earth’s energetics, by showing
that the thermal conductivity of the liquid outer
core is likely to be much higher than previously
believed, and that, as a consequence, at least
15
TW of core heat loss is needed to drive the geo-
dynamo. The Earth has a moderately strong
magnetic field, unlike Mars and Venus, which
have no observable magnetic fields, with the
CMB
7500
7000
6500
6000
at a
Adiab
Temperature (K)
Earth’s field long thought to be generated by
thermochemical convection in the liquid outer
core (Elsasser, 1946; Glatzmaier and Roberts,
1995). If vigorous convection occurs, then both
upwelling and downwelling regions in the outer
core should have adiabatic temperature-depth
distributions. The adiabatic temperature gradi-
ent near the surface of the outer core can be eas-
ily estimated from seismic and thermodynamic
observations (Fig. 5) to be of the order

1 K/km. For a PREM-like outer core, Pozzo
et al.’s (2012) ab initio determination of a

100 W/m-K outer core conductivity near the
core-mantle boundary would imply that
15.7 TW would be conducted up the outer-core
adiabat for Labrosse’s (2003) preferred value
for the thermal expansivity of the outer core near
the core-mantle boundary of 1.7  105 K1. In
Earth’s
ICB Center
zing
B Free
f IC
et o
t Ons

5500
Cor
e bat
re Adia
o
5000 er C
Out
4500 nt-day
e
Pres
4000
3500
3000
Present-day ICB T = 6200 K
2500 Present-day Average Core T = 5214 K
2000
100 150 200 250 300 350
Pressure (GPa)

FIG. 5 Inner core solidus estimated from the inverse Clapeyron slope determination dTClapeyron/dP ¼ TICBΔvICB/LICB
(Morgan et al., 2016). The predicted solidus of the inner core’s freezing reaction is shown by the dotted black line. It is based
on the assumption of a PREM-like density jump at the inner core boundary which results in a specific volume change
ΔvICB ¼ (1/ρOC  1/ρIC) ¼ 3.67  106m3/kg, a current inner core freezing temperature TICB ¼ 6200 K TICB ¼ 6200 K (Anzellini
et al., 2013), and a latent heat of freezing LICB ¼ 7.5  105J/K (Nimmo, 2007). Also shown by the black solid line is a PREM-like
adiabat for the current outer core assuming the linear thermal expansivity distribution in Fig. 4A, and in a black-dashed line the
predicted hotter adiabat for the core at the time that the core had cooled enough for the inner core to start to freeze at the Earth’s
center. This adiabat was determined with the approximation that there was the same net core mass as at present, and PREM-
like density gradients with no density jump at the depth of the current inner core boundary, and the thermal expansivity pro-
file shown in Fig. 2A. The net average core temperature drop associated with secular cooling between the time of initial inner
core freezing and the present is the region between the initial and present core temperature profiles. This amount of secular
cool-cooling would result in a mean mass-averaged core temperature drop is 774 K, equivalent to a secular cooling rate of

258 K/Ga over a
3 Ga duration for the growth of the inner core.
 12 K and U in the core do not provide the core’s
>15 TW missing source of energy
order for convection to take place in the outer
core—and the convective geodynamo to
exist—the outer core must therefore be losing
more heat than its upward heat transport by
conduction, e.g., more than
15.7 TW.
This surprising finding has shaken the previ-
ous consensus view that outer core convection
was associated with core heat loss of
2–4
TW, with roughly half this energy being sup-
plied by the gravitational segregation and latent
heat of freezing of a denser iron-rich inner core,
and half from
45 K of secular cooling of the
core over the past Ga of existence of the inner
core. Nimmo (2007) and Morgan et al. (2016)
contain more details on the conventional assess-
ment, which also generally assumes that the
geodynamo has only lasted for the past
1 Ga
instead of the >3.2 Ga of the Earth’s measured
record of a strong geomagnetic field (Aubert
et al., 2010). There are really only two possible
sources of additional heat to drive the geody-
namo, either the core must somehow contain a
strong source of radioactive decay—even more
radiogenic than the silicate mantle, which con-
tradicts what is believed to be understood about
the geochemistry of silicates and iron, or the
core must be cooling much more strongly than

45 K/(1–3)Gyr.
12. K and U in the core do not provide the
core’s
>15 TW missing source of energy
It seems extremely unlikely that the core con-
tains enough radiogenic potassium for this to be
the missing heat source, even though several
geodynamic studies (cf. Pozzo et al., 2012; Lay
et al., 2008; Buffett, 2012) have proposed this
hypothesis. To generate
15 TW of radiogenic
energy by decay of 40K, the core, with a mass
of 1.9  1024 kg and potassium’s radiogenic
energy production of 3.48  109 W/kg, would
need to contain 4.31  1021 kg of potassium or
0.22% (2200 ppm) potassium by weight. For con-
text, this is 10 times higher than the concentra-
tion estimated within the silicate mantle and
51
crust, and thousands of times higher than the
concentrations measured in iron meteorites. From
a geochemical perspective, this seems highly
unlikely because potassium is not a siderophile
element as discussed in depth in (McDonough,
2005). Instead, observational, theoretical, and
experimental chemical arguments all point to
potassium being depleted in the core relative to
the silicate mantle. First, the iron meteorites,
thought to be pieces of asteroidal cores, are
extremely depleted in potassium and typically
contain <1 ppm K (e.g., Kaiser and Zaehringer,
1968). In fact, the intrinsic abundance of potas-
sium is so low in iron-meteorites that in some
cases a significant fraction of their potassium
has been produced by cosmic-ray spallation,
and potassium’s build-up has been used to deter-
mine the cosmic-ray exposure age of these meteor-
ite samples. Second, while asteroidal cores formed
at low pressure and there has been speculation
that more potassium might have partitioned into
the Earth’s core under higher pressures
(Bukowinski, 1976; Parker et al., 1996), other theo-
retical considerations suggest it will never have a
strong affinity for a high-pressure iron-alloy liq-
uid (Sherman, 1990). Third, laboratory experi-
ments have confirmed theoretical expectations
and shown that while there is some increase in
the metal/silicate partition coefficient of potas-
sium with pressure, it never partitions preferen-
tially into the metal phase (Corgne et al., 2007).
These experiments imply a maximum possible
abundance of potassium in the core of

250 ppm (Gessmann and Wood, 2002).
Laboratory experiments show that U is even
more unlikely to partition into the core than K,
as it remains highly lithophile at all relevant
temperatures and pressures. However, like K,
it will partition somewhat into a sulfide liquid
or sulfide-rich metallic liquid under highly
reducing conditions. Nevertheless, even under
these assumptions, Malavergne et al. (2007) esti-
mate the U concentration in the core to be
0.63 ppb, compared to a silicate Earth concentra-
tion of 12–22 ppb. Geochemical constraints
based on laboratory experiments at high
52 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
pressure and temperature thus limit radioactive
heat production to a maximum of 1.79 TW
(250 ppm K generating 1.67 TW and 0.67 ppm U
generating 0.12 TW), with the most probable
number being close to zero.
13. Does secular cooling of the core
supply
>15 TW across the core-mantle
boundary?
If the ab initio determination of core conduc-
tivity is correct, then we must seriously reconsider
whether secular core cooling has been the primary
supply of >15 TW of heat across the core-mantle
boundary, at least during the last
3.2 Ga when
there is evidence that the geodynamo has been
active (Aubert et al., 2010). For this to work, core
cooling would need to release on the order of
15 TW times 3.2 Ga ¼ 1.51  1030 J. Here, we can
neglect the relatively minor energy release from
solidification of the inner core (Morgan et al.,
2016; Nimmo, 2007). The heat capacity of the core
is estimated to be 840 J/kg-K, and its mass is
1.95  1024 kg (Nimmo, 2007). For a compressible
PREM-like Earth, the core would also release
stored gravitational energy as it cools and con-
tracts (Fig. 4). This effect is fairly significant; it
would augment the formal heat capacity of the
core by (1/(1–0.71)) ¼ 41%, so that the core energy
release due to secular cooling is estimated to be
1.41  840Jkg1K1  1.95  1024kg ¼ 2.31  1027
J/K of secular cooling. Thus, for secular cooling
to release 1.51 1030 J across the core-mantle
boundary, the core would need to have cooled
by 650 K over the last 3.2 Ga, or
900 K over
4.5 Ga if core cooling was relatively uniform over
time. Furthermore, the core would also need to
have “initially” formed hotter than its overlying
mantle, as the mantle has cooled by no more than

110 K over the last 3.2 Ga (Fig. 3 summarizes this
discussion.). Perhaps surprisingly, both of these
prerequisites seem quite reasonable upon closer
inspection.
14. Freezing of the inner core may occur
over an 815 K temperature interval
A weak constraint on core-cooling has been
the idea that an inner core is needed for core con-
vection to generate a geodynamo (Nimmo,
2007), combined with extrapolations of
diamond-anvil experiments on pure-iron mix-
tures that suggest that inner core freezing has
occurred over a temperature interval of only

45 K (see Nimmo, 2007). The inference of
a
45 K freezing interval is based on estimates
of the adiabatic temperature gradient at the
inner-core (IC) boundary, which range from
5.1–8.3 K/GPa (see Nimmo, 2007), with a
PREM-based value of 7 K/GPa (Morgan et al.,
2016) and Nimmo (2007) preferred the similar
7.6 K/GPa, and the inverse Clapeyron slope
dTm/dPof the freezing reaction at the inner core
boundary (329 GPa). This is typically extrapo-
lated from lower-pressure diamond anvil exper-
iments on pure-iron to have a slope of order

10 K/GPa, with Nimmo’s (2007) preferred
value being 8.7 K/GPa. The difference between
the inverse-Clapeyron freezing slope and the
adiabatic gradient at the base of the outer core
(
1.1 K/GPa) constrains the temperature drop
from initial inner core formation at the Earth’s
center (364 GPa) to be of order 1.1*(364–329) 
40 K, with Nimmo (2007) estimating a preferred
value of 45 K. This estimate, however, is based
on extrapolation of diamond-anvil experiments
on the p–T behavior of a pure-iron mixture, while
the outer core has a density which indicates that
it contains
10% lighter elements (S, Si, O, Al,
H, … see Poirier, 1994) dissolved within its mol-
ten Fe-Ni alloy. (Which light elements are dis-
solved in the outer core alloy remains a long-
standing debate in planetary science.) Morgan
et al. (2016) noted that we can use seismic PREM
constraints on the density jump at the IC bound-
ary to directly estimate the inverse Clapeyron
slope for a homogenous phase transition—which
the inner core-outer core boundary is not.
 15 Core segregation is probably associated with significant core heating with respect to the mantle
Interestingly, this crude seismic-based estimate
for the inverse Clapeyron slope is 30.3 K/GPa,
which would imply an
815 K temperature drop
instead of a
45K temperature drop during the
growth of the inner core (Morgan et al., 2016).
15. Core segregation is probably
associated with significant core heating
with respect to the mantle
Likewise, the “conventional” hypothesis that
liquid Fe-Ni separated from the Earth’s initial
silicate-iron mixture at relatively low pressures
and then sank to form the core may be consistent
with the core forming
1000 K hotter than its
overlying silicate mantle. As long as the gravita-
tional energy released by core sinking is largely
generated and then kept within sinking proto-
core liquids, the core could have an initial tem-
perature even 1000s of K higher than the Earth’s
initial post-accretion + core-formation mantle
adiabat. If accreting Fe-Ni material melts at
lower temperatures than typical mantle silicates,
then pools of dense molten iron can grow within
a usually crystalline silicate mantle, in a scenario
where transient “magma lakes” frequently
formed and froze during the Earth’s early accre-
tion, while larger impact accretion events were
associated with the rapid coalescence of already
segregated proto-planetary cores. Once large
enough (in the following analysis, we estimate
that only
50 m3 blebs of molten iron will be
needed), a molten iron bleb can propagate
downward as a liquid Fe-Ni “dike” that cracks
its way to the core-mantle boundary in the man-
ner that Weertman (1971) first envisioned that
water-filled crevasses would migrate down-
ward in glaciers. In this hydraulic fracturing sce-
nario, the main resistance to the downward
migration of iron is not the difference between
the fracture and healing energies associated
with opening the iron-filled crack’s tip and clos-
ing its tail, but the viscous resistance of the iron
in the crack to its downward flow. Morgan and
53
Holtzman (2005) discuss this general issue in
more detail.) This means that the bulk of the
gravitational energy release associated with
downward motion of the iron-filled crack will
go into viscous dissipation in the downward
flowing iron. Once we know how fast the crack
will descend, we can estimate how much heat
will be conducted into the iron’s adjacent silicate
wallrock during its descent. Eq. 22.5 in
Nakashima’s (1993) extension of Weertman’s
(1971) treatment for a 2-D planar idealized crack
allows us to estimate the descent speed for a
crack that will sink when it is of a size and shape
given by eq. 17 in Nakashima (1993). The key
factors here are that the viscosity of liquid iron
at upper mantle conditions (
7 mPa-s Kono
et al., 2015) is only
7 times greater than a value
for liquid water (
1 mPa-s Walther and Orville,
1982) considered in Nakashima’s (1993) analysis
of the buoyant propagation of water-filled
cracks during crustal metamorphism associated
with crustal metamorphism, while the density
contrast between liquid Fe-Ni and silicate
(
7860 kgm3–3260 kgm3  5000 kgm3) at
shallow mantle conditions is 2.5 times larger
than the 2000 kgm3 difference between crustal
rocks and water that was assumed in
Nakashima’s (1993) analysis. First, this implies
that the liquid iron should migrate downward
with a similar geometry and speed to upward
migration of a thin water-filled crack during
hydraulic fracturing. Rescaling Nakashima’s
analysis, an isolated liquid-iron-filled crack of
vertical length 100 m would descend at a speed
of
(2.5/7)*0.3 m/s  0.1 m/s. A km-long crack
would propagate 10 times faster, as the propaga-
tion rate given in eq. 22.5 of Nakashima (1993) is
proportional to crack-length*fluid-density-con-
trast/viscosity once the crack is significantly lon-
ger than its critical length. An iron-filled crack’s
critical length for propagation would also be
similar to
10–40 m estimated by Nakashima
(1993) for a water-filled crack, as it depends on
the ratio of the critical stress intensity factor to
54 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
fluid density-contrast, and both values are likely
to be
2.5 times larger than the values assumed
by Nakashima (1993). As the crack’s critical
length for downward propagation depends
on this ratio to the 2/3 power, even a 25-fold
higher critical stress intensity factor would only
increase the critical length by a factor of
102/3 ¼ 4.6, which would lead to a critical length
estimate of
50–200 m. Finally, the average crack
width would scale as 2.5 times wider than Naka-
shima’s estimate of 0.2 mm width for a 100 m-
long vertical crack, i.e., 0.5 mm width. If we
now imagine that real cracks would be disklike
instead of the 2-D shape that was assumed in
order to use an analytical fracture mechanics
treatment, then the typical fluid volume of a
sinking 100 m-long crack would be of order

100 m * 100 m * 0.005 m  50 m3 of liquid iron.
Once the crack is several times larger than
its critical length, then its main resistance to
downward propagation is the viscous friction
resisting the descent of liquid iron into the
downward-growing crack, e.g., viscous dissipa-
tion within the flowing iron mostly balances the
gravitational energy release associated with the
descent of the iron bleb. If the crack is 100 m long
and it descends at a speed of 0.1 m/s, then it will
take 1000 s to descend 100 m. (As Nakashima’s
estimate of crack descent speed is proportional
to crack-length once the crack is several times
longer than its critical length, to first-order the
time liquid-iron would be in contact with wall-
rock would not depend on crack-length.)
pffiffiffiffi In
1000 s, heat would conduct 2.32 κt ¼ 0.073 m
to each side of the crack (Turcotte and
Schubert, 2002), assuming a typical value of
order
106 m2/s for the mantle’s thermal dif-
fusivity. In this case, each heating pulse would
have a linear upside-down “V” shape with a half
width
15 times larger than the width of the
crack, implying that core segregation would
heat the equivalent of
7.5 cm of mantle as the
liquid iron passes by. Using appropriate densi-
ties and heat capacities, a 0.5-cm-wide crack
filled with
8000 kgm3 density iron with a heat
capacity of
840 Jkg1 K1 would also heat the
equivalent of a 7.5-cm-wide strip of mantle of
density
4000 kgm3 and heat capacity
1167
Jkg1 K1, e.g., 90% of viscous dissipation heat
would be conducted into the iron crack’s sur-
rounding mantle wallrock. If, however, des-
cending iron-filled cracks tend to reuse the
slightly warmer, weaker trails left by previous
descending cracks, like other brittle failure
events tend to reuse previous lines of weakness,
then only a very small fraction of the mantle
would be heated by the protocore’s iron as it seg-
regates, so the early core would form even hotter
than its overlying mantle adiabat.
We can evaluate the gravitational energy
associated with the Earth’s accretion and core
segregation using the approach of Flaser and
Birch (1973), and the assumption of a PREM-like
mantle and core. We numerically model that the
Earth accreted as 1000 uniform mass increments
containing today’s PREM-fractions of Fe-core
and Si-mantle material, with core-segregation
following each accretion increment. After each
accretion increment, the gravitational potential
energy of the planet is equal to that of a differen-
tiated sphere with a single undifferentiated (Fe
+ Si) layer at the proto-Earth’s surface. The grav-
itational potential energy difference between
this configuration and the Fe-core-segregated
configuration created by moving the top-layer’s
Fe-fraction to the top of the growing Fe-core is
then determined. This is summed over all accre-
tion steps to obtain the estimate for the gravita-
tional energy release associated with initial
Fe-core segregation. The primary advantage of
this approach is that it lets us use PREM-
inferred-densities to model each accretion and
segregation step, after cubic extrapolation of
the core’s density-pressure curve to extend to
shallow mantle pressures using the assumption
that the initial core’s density
ρinitialcore ðP½GPa Þ ¼ 7250 kgm3 + 24:9P  4:47
 102 P2 + 4:46  105 P3
(5)
 15 Core segregation is probably associated with significant core heating with respect to the mantle 55
also had PREM-like gradients. We find that (see Fig. 6). Even if core-segregation energy were
pressure-volume work during core formation only preferentially concentrated by 20% into the
generated an average of 4700 K of core heating sinking core material, the core would then have
during the core’s compression to ambient pres- accreted on a
1000 K hotter adiabat than its
sures. An additional 1.61  1031 J of gravitational overlying mantle. A much larger initial energy
energy was released by core segregation, source was the gravitational energy released
enough to raise the temperature of the entire during the Earth’s accretion. This approximately
proto-Earth by 2700 kJ/kg (equivalent to equals its gravitational binding energy, which

2700 K of heating), or the temperature of the for a PREM-like Earth (Dziewonski and
proto-core by 8230 kJ/kg if viscous dissipation Anderson, 1981) is 2.5  1032 J, or 41,800 kJ/kg
was concentrated within the segregating and when averaged over the Earth’s mass. Most of
sinking proto-core material as discussed above this accretion energy is likely to have radiated

16

14
eg.
Core S
+ max
p−V Energy (MJ/kg) or ~T(1000K)

12

10

8 eg.
Core S zing
+ min set IC Free
adiabat on
6

rial
ore bu
4 rk of C
p−V wo

0
150 200 250 300 350
P (GPa)

FIG. 6 Summary of pressure-volume work and gravitational energy release effects that helped to heat the Earth’s initial
core, neglecting contributions from the decay of short-lived radioisotopes. Core energetics are given in MJ/kg, which can
be roughly translated into 1000s of degrees K with the assumption that the mean effective heat capacity of the core material
was about
1000 kJ/kg (e.g., an effective heat capacity midway between 840 kJ/kg and 1.41*840 kJ/kg) during its descent to
ambient core pressures. Pressure-volume work heats core-material during its compression to ambient densities (see text) to
the internal energies shown by the solid black line. Almost all of this work is transformed into heat within the compressing
proto-core. Uniform core segregation within a PREM-like Earth releases 1.61  1031 J of gravitational energy, which would
add an additional 2700 kJ/kg to the proto-core (and proto-mantle) if uniformly dissipated within the growing Earth as shown
by the dash-dot black line, or up to 8230 kJ/kg of additional energy to the proto-core if viscous dissipation was preferentially
concentrated within the viscously deforming and sinking proto-core material (dash-double-dotted black line). Retention of even a
small fraction of the initial energy of accretion would augment these effects, as discussed in the text. However, almost any
likely PREM-like proto-core (shaded region in figure) clearly had sufficient energy-of-formation to be hotter than the adiabat
determined for the onset of IC freezing at
3Ga in Fig. 5, which is drawn here with a dashed black line.
56 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
away from the hot growing Earth. However, if
5% was retained by the accreting Earth, it would
have raised the proto-Earth’s average tempera-
ture by
2000 K. Clearly, there was more than
enough mechanical energy available during
the Earth’s accretion to have heated the Earth’s
early core to the average initial temperature of

6400 K needed for it to have since cooled by

1000 K over the Earth’s subsequent evolution.
16. Implications of seismic and energetics
constraints on the structure of mantle
convection
The previous observations on the seismic
structures and energetics involved in mantle
convection motivate the following conjectures.
We envision that the Earth’s mantle has two
interlocking modes of flow. The much higher
viscosity lower mantle is slowly moving in a
low-order axisymmetric degree-2 spherical har-
monic P20 mode that Busse (1983) proposed to
explain Dziewonski et al.’s (1977) observed
low-order seismic structure in the lower mantle.
This lower mantle flow is in response to the
long-term addition of cold dense slabs in a gen-
erally circumpolar ring from the upper mantle
(Fig. 7), with lower mantle flow tending to
“pull” subduction zones into this long-lived
lower mantle flow structure. This cold down-
welling sinks to the core-mantle boundary
(and so cools the core in a very effective way),
while also inducing slow mantle upwelling
beneath the two antipodal “superplume” axes
of the P20 lower mantle flow pattern. When cool
lower mantle material reaches D00 , it is heated at
the core mantle boundary and removed to feed

10–20 narrow
400-km diameter plumes that
are preferentially sited in the two antipodal slow
upwelling regions of P20-like axisymmetric
lower mantle flow (Fig. 7). Plume material fed
by the hot D00 /core-mantle boundary, in turn,
rises to the base of the lithosphere where it
spreads out to form a plume-fed asthenosphere
that is warmer than most of its underlying
mantle. Finally, the asthenosphere is consumed
and primarily cooled from the Earth’s top sur-
face to make the oceanic lithosphere (and lesser
amounts of delaminated continental litho-
sphere) that cools and subducts to replenish
the downwelling ring of lower mantle flow.
17. Lower mantle flow: Pattern and
speeds
With this scenario in mind, we can estimate
typical speeds of lower mantle flow from the
above-mentioned seismic observations. First,
the estimate of
360 km3/yr for the present-
day slab flux (Table 1.) is based on the current
rate of plate creation (
2.7 km2/yr) multiplied
by an estimated mean
133 km thickness of
average subduction lithosphere, as further
discussed in Morgan and Morgan (1999) and
Yamamoto et al. (2007). Here, 133 km is the
thickness needed to generate the cool mass flux
needed to remove 29 TW of heat carried by sub-
ducting slabs. Another way to envision this slab
subduction mass flux is that it would take 3.4
Gyr to process one mantle mass through the
spreading center + subduction system. If we
now assume that this 360 km3/yr downwelling
slab flux is distributed along a 40,000 km cir-
cumpolar ring that is 133 km wide, then the
implied average sinking rate along the top of
this circumpolar ring would be 6.7 cm/yr.
If we now take this estimate for the mean near-
surface vertical subduction speed, 6.7 cm/yr,
and assume that the average slab-fed down-
welling region broadens from
133 km to its

3000 km seismically-observed width in the
lower mantle, then the mean downwelling speed
in the lower mantle’s “ring of subduction” would
be 6.7 cm/yr * 3300 kgm3 * 133 km/(5000 kgm3
* 3000 km)  2 mm/yr, so that it would take

1 Gyr for this slowly sinking lower mantle to
reach the core-mantle boundary. The observa-
tion that current rates of gravitational release
are
30% larger than current resupply from
core heat loss and radiogenic mantle power
 17 Lower mantle flow: Pattern and speeds 57
Spin
axis
(variable)

m/yr
1.3 m
0.1
m
/y
/y
r r
m
3
0.

r
2.6 mm/yr 2.6 mm/y

0.3 m
/yr
1.6 m/yr
0.1 m/yr
0.3 m/yr

/yr 0.1 m/y

0.1 m r

/yr
1.6 m

0.2
2.6 m

-0.
m/yr

3m
/yr
m/yr
2.6 m
/yr
mm
1.3

FIG. 7 Two-pace structure of the Earth’s mantle convection. Convection in the Earth’s much more viscous lower mantle is
driven by the addition of cold subducted slabs in a
3000-km-wide circumpolar belt along its top and its heating and removal
at the core-mantle boundary. Slow downwelling in the circumpolar slab-fed ring occurs at speeds of 1.3–2.6 mm/yr, so that it
would take
0.77–1.54 Gyr for this slow lower mantle downwelling to sink 2000 km to reach the core-mantle boundary. There
is strong lateral flow within hot weak mantle along the core-mantle-boundary (red region at the base of the mantle) that feeds

10–20 hot and strong upwelling mantle plumes which transport much of the core’s heat loss to the base of the surface tectonic
plates. These take roughly
20 Myr to rise through the lower mantle. In addition, there is a second, much slower mode of
degree-2 slow lower mantle convection that leads to regions of slow, broad mantle upwelling in the two antipodal axes of
the circumpolar ring of downwelling (Busse, 1983). These regions, shown as wispy warm orange blebs, take
0.4–0.7 Gyr
to rise through the lower mantle. Strong mantle plumes preferentially form, very slowly move toward, and rise through these
“superplume” regions of lower mantle upwelling. Material in the plume conduits ascends through the lower mantle in

20 Myr. The much more rapidly ascending plume material will lose heat through the plume conduit’s edges to further warm
adjacent superplume material, thereby increasing the superplume’s overall temperature and buoyancy. Characteristic speeds
in these two interlinked flow structures are shown for selected arrows, with different arrow colors indicating differing speeds
of mantle flow. In this figure, redder colors denote a hotter mantle, while greener colors denote cooler mantle. The N-S spatial
pattern of the cooler circumpolar ring of mantle along the core-mantle boundary is also shown along the rear top surface of the
cut-out core, as is the Earth’s spin axis, which is partially stabilized by the two antipodal equatorial superplume regions so that
true polar wander is predicted to only occur along paths that lie above the cooler circumpolar ring.
58 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection
generation hints that the modern subduction
rates may be somewhat higher than the average
subduction rates over the past
1 Ga. A 30%
lower descent rate in the lower mantle would
imply mean lower mantle sinking speeds to be
of order
1.3 mm/yr, in which case it would take
an average of
1.54 Ga to sink through the lower
mantle.
Busse (1975, 1983) also noted that the pure
P20 ¼ Vsink(3cos2θ  1) pattern, where θ is the
angle measured from an axisymmetric upwell-
ing pole, is the predicted critical Rayleigh num-
ber pattern for the onset of stable convective
flow in a highly viscous lower mantle with a
stress-free top and base (Busse, 1975). However,
in Busse’s (1983) flow scenario, both the down-
welling and upwelling regions would be
responsible for all heat transfer from the bottom
to top surfaces of the high-viscosity layer, while
in the above scenario, the hot plume-fed mantle
that rises above the lower mantle travels first
along the base of D00 where the lower mantle
becomes warm, weak material as heat flows into
it from the outer core, and then in narrow verti-
cal lower-viscosity plume-structures that pierce
through the lower mantle to supply the vertical
return flow to the subducting slabs that enter
along the top of its downwelling cold ring. Next,
we will examine the three components of this
warm vertical return flow—lower viscosity nar-
row plumes of focused upward flow, a warm
low-viscosity boundary layer at the D00 base of
the mantle, and another relatively warm low-
viscosity plume-fed asthenosphere layer that
forms beneath the tectonic plates.
18. Upward return flow circuit: Lower
mantle plumes
The lower mantle also contains a
360 km3/
yr (near-surface equivalent volume) upwelling
flux contained within
10–20 400-km-diameter
vertical plume structures which pierce the P20
pattern of lower mantle flow.
If there are
18 lower mantle thermal
plumes, each containing a mean upward flux
of
20 km3/yr * 3300kgm3 of upwelling warm
mantle, then the implied plume viscosity at
lower mantle depths can be estimated from
the analytical buoyant plume flux Qp relation
for an axisymmetric thermal plume (Turcotte
and Schubert, 2002): Qp ¼ (π/8)ΔρgR4/μp,
where R is the plume’s radius (as seen in
seismological images), g is the gravitational
acceleration, μp is the plume’s viscosity,
and the temperature-density dependence is
Δρ ¼ ρmαΔT. For PREM-like mantle proper-
ties at
1700 km depth (ρm ¼ 5000 kgm3,
α ¼ 2x105K1), a plume temperature contrast
ΔT¼
300 K, and a plume radius of 200 km,
the plume’s viscosity would need to be of order

4.5  1020 Pa-s for it to have an upward mass
flux equivalent to
20 km3/yr * 3300kgm3.
In this case, the average upwelling rate in a typ-
ical lower mantle plume would be of order

10 cm/yr,
25 times faster than the speed of
background mantle P20 flow, with upward
plume material taking
20 Myr to traverse
the lower mantle. If actual mantle plumes were
narrower, and seismic images of deep mantle
plumes include a much more slowly moving
thermal halo that surrounds a narrower plume
center, then for the same upward plume flux
the inferred lower mantle plume viscosity
would be lower, and implied plume ascent
speed higher.
19. Upward return flow circuit: Strong
lateral flow within the base of the D00 layer
In this scenario, there is also strong lateral
flow just above the core-mantle boundary. This
lateral flow is what feeds the
10–20 deep man-
tle plume conduits that transport most of the
core’s heat loss through the lower mantle, by
bringing in warm lower mantle from along
the entire core-mantle boundary where it has
been heated and weakened by the strong heat
 20 Upward return flow circuit: Strong lateral flow in a shallow plume-fed asthenosphere
flow from the outer core. Stacey and Loper
(1983) used simple analytical models to explore
the anticipated lateral flow within a
150-
km-thick thermal D00 boundary layer. Because
of the inverse exponential (Arrhenius-type)
temperature dependence of mantle viscosity,
their analysis predicts that lateral flow will
strongly concentrate within the hottest region
at the bottom of the D00 thermal boundary layer,
where it would form a
10–20-km-thick region
of concentrated lateral flow (Stacey and Loper,
1983). When they did their analysis, their
scenario assumed that there was only
2 TW
of heat coming from the core, so it had to
include an implausibly low thermal diffusivity
(
0.17 mm2/s) at the base of the mantle in order
to match the very low assumed core heat flux.
Our previous analysis of core energetics sug-
gests that the present-day core heat flux is

15–20 TW, i.e.,
7.5–10 times larger than the
estimate they used, so that both the lower man-
tle’s thermal conductivity and the net plume-
feeding mass flux from D00 should be increased
by
2–5-fold from their assumed values (Stacey
and Loper, 1983).
The layer of strong lateral flow at the base
of D00 will also experience relatively strong vis-
cous dissipation, especially where it radially
converges toward the base of mantle plume con-
duits. Additional viscous-dissipation-generated
heat could be what leads to the observed thin

100-km-diameter ULVZ puddles that have
been imaged at the core-mantle boundary
beneath several deep mantle plumes (Yu and
Garnero, 2018). The higher parts of the D00 layer
will also tend to be dragged toward the two
antipodal superplume regions by the slow P20
flow in the overlying deep mantle. At the base
of the superplume regions shallower (cooler)
D00 material will be incorporated into warmer-
than-average-mantle superplume upwelling
regions that the even hotter plume conduits
would pierce and heat during the superplume
regions’
500 Myr ascent through the lower
mantle (Fig. 7).
59
20. Upward return flow circuit: Strong
lateral flow in a shallow plume-fed
asthenosphere
In this scenario the final place with strong lat-
eral flow in the mantle is the place where plume
material ponds beneath the Earth’s lithosphere,
the asthenosphere. Androvandi et al. (2011)
termed this region the “plume graveyard.”
Deffeyes (1972) first proposed the basic idea of
a hot asthenosphere layer below the tectonic
plates to be a natural consequence of mantle
plumes. A plume-fed asthenosphere (Morgan
et al., 2013, 1995a, b; Morgan and Morgan,
1999; Yamamoto et al., 2007; Morgan, 1997a,b,
1999; Morgan and Smith, 1992), is a natural con-
sequence of the fact that the hottest and most
buoyant mantle rises as plumes (Morgan,
1971) until its ascent is impeded at the base of
the lithosphere. At this point, as long as there is
enough plume material, this hot, weak, material
will pond and flow laterally beneath the base of
the lithosphere until it either upwells and is
transformed into oceanic lithosphere at a spread-
ing center (Morgan and Smith, 1992), or attaches
to cooling, thickening oceanic lithosphere
(Morgan and Smith, 1992), or is entrained and
dragged down by a subducting slab (Morgan
et al., 2007). The basic pattern has been repro-
duced in simplified 3-D Cartesian experiments
(Morgan et al., 2013) and is also a key feature seen
in analog experiments of background convection
with plumes as shown in Fig. 8 (Androvandi
et al., 2011). Other Cartesian 2-D (e.g., Sinha
and Butler, 2007) and spherical 3-D (e.g.,
Bunge, 2005) numerical experiments of mantle-
like convection led to similar asthenosphere-like
regions of ponded plume material beneath a top
cold “lithospheric” thermal boundary layer,
especially when the lower mantle viscosity was
significantly higher than the mean upper mantle
viscosity.
While this two-pace fast upper + slow lower
whole mantle flow structure may have existed
at least since the onset of the Earth’s geodynamo,
60 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection

Plume T
FIG. 8 The “plume graveyard” (Androvandi et al., 2011) asthenosphere layer that forms in a bottom-heated convection
experiment in fluids with a temperature-dependent viscosity. Letters A, B, C, D mark isotherms (from hottest A to coldest
D), while T is the vertical line of a thermoprobe. Left: Hot instabilities in a sugar syrup that is cooled from above and heated
from below. Temperature field on a vertical plane section was measured 8 cm from the front wall of the tank. Beneath the cold
top thermal boundary are several hot pockets of fluid. These pockets were fed by past and present upwelling plumes. We can
also see the birth of new hot plumes. Right: The fractional area with temperature above isotherm “A” as a function of depth.
A relatively hot temperature zone appears directly below the cold thermal boundary layer, its hot temperature reflects that
material in this region recently rose from the hot basal thermal boundary layer. Due to the temperature-dependence of
viscosity, it is also a low-viscosity zone—an “asthenosphere.” Modified from S. Androvandi, A. Davaille, A. Limare, A.
Foucquier, C. Marais, 2011. At least three scales of convection in a mantle with strongly temperature-dependent viscosity. Phys. Earth
Planet. Inter. 188, 132–141.

the mantle’s temperature, and the speed and
overturn rate of this convective flow pattern
could still have decreased over time as the man-
tle’s radiogenic heat production waned. How-
ever, as the mantle’s internal radiogenic heat
production waned, the relative heat supply from
core cooling could have actually increased
toward the present (Morgan et al., 2016).
21. Implications of a plume-fed
asthenosphere beneath the surface tectonic
plates
The existence of a plume-fed asthenosphere
would imply a sub-adiabatic temperature gradi-
ent below the asthenosphere (Deffeyes, 1972;
Morgan et al., 1995b), consistent with “steep”
seismic velocity vs. depth increases in this
region (Stixrude and Lithgow-Bertelloni, 2005).
In general, it would imply that normal underly-
ing mantle would be unable to buoyantly rise
through the warmer, more buoyant astheno-
sphere to melt, unless this took place beneath
thick continental roots in places where the
plume-fed asthenosphere was nearly absent
and/or anomalously cool. The scenario can
explain how nearby volcanic and non-volcanic
rifted margins are able to form during continen-
tal rifting (Reston and Morgan, 2004; Morgan
et al., 2020), and how decompression melting
due to lateral plume-fed asthenosphere flow
beneath upwardly sloping lithosphere can
explain “anomalous” volcanism in E. Australia
and E. Asia (Morgan and Morgan, 2002). The
only place where the deep mantle might heat
enough to become sufficiently buoyant to rise
into the asthenosphere region is within the
superplume regions, where slowly rising warm
superplume material might be able to be heated
sufficiently by lateral heat conduction from
nearby mantle plume conduits. If so, perhaps
broader anomalously hot regions within the
superplume could also continue to rise as single,
or multiple plume conduits in the upper mantle
to also feed the asthenosphere, and so explain
why apparent plume “clusters” (e.g., Tristan
and Gough in the South Atlantic) are sometimes
 22 Speculations for the Earth’s continents and core
found in these regions (Morgan and Morgan,
2007). Superplume regions could also tend to
have strong mantle plumes located along their
periphery because the lateral feeding of their
hot source material along the base of D00 would
primarily come from the direction of the circum-
polar belt of descending lower mantle (Morgan
and Morgan, 2007). In general, the bases of
plume conduits would also pull in material com-
ing from different radial directions in the D00
layer. This could account for them having
laterally heterogeneous source regions with
long-lived spatial zonation that creates a geo-
chemical “striping” analogous to the colorful
stripes made by some popular toothpaste dis-
pensers (Hoernle et al., 2015, 2000; Farnetani
and Hofmann, 2010).
This scenario is also consistent with the obser-
vation that the ocean island basalts that are prod-
ucts of plume melting have a different trace
element and isotopic composition than the normal
mid-ocean ridge basalts that are the byproduct of
melting asthenosphere that previously melted a
small amount to make ocean island basalts as it
upwelled within a mantle plume and entered
the asthenosphere (Morgan and Morgan, 1999).
This type of chemical and isotopic variability is
possible if the mantle is composed of a mixture
of the multiple lithologies of depleted mantle,
mid-ocean ridge basalt, ocean island basalt, and
oceanic and continental sediments that return to
the mantle in subduction zones (Morgan and
Morgan, 1999). The arrays of ocean island basalts
at individual hotspot chains show evidence of
progressive partial melt extraction at different
depths during their ascent within a mantle plume
(Morgan, 1999), with the initial deepest melting
tending to concentrate in the lowest-solidus,
easiest-to-melt lithologies as they use heat con-
ducted from adjacent more refractory lithologies
to enhance their deep melt production (Morgan,
2001). Finally, the lower mantle sink-time in the
downwelling circumpolar ring, if
1.54 Gyr
(e.g., mean sink rates of
1.3 mm/yr), can explain
the observed “secondary isochron” lead-lead age
61
seen in many suites of ocean island basalts, sug-
gesting that their primary plume source material
could be recycled slab sources containing oceanic
basalts (OIB and MORB) and sediments that
formed and subducted
1–2.5 Gyr ago (Brooks
et al., 1976; Chase, 1981; Hart and Zindler, 1989).
22. Speculations for the Earth’s
continents and core
In addition to its implications for the geochem-
ical evolution of the Earth’s crust and mantle (see
(Morgan and Morgan, 1999) and references in the
previous section), the above scenario, if true, has
additional implications for the evolution of the
Earth’s continents and magnetic field.
• The assembly, evolution, and breakup of
Pangaea—and previous supercontinents—is
strongly linked to the lower mantle’s
preferred circumpolar belt of downwelling
(Le Pichon et al., 2019; Le Pichon and
Huchon, 1984). If the subduction-linked
circumpolar ring of downwelling in the
lower mantle takes
1–1.5 Gyr to sink
2000 km, then this would serve as a long-
lived “attractor” for surface subduction
zones (Evans, 2003). Le Pichon et al. (2019)
demonstrate how episodes of internal Rheic
(
400 Ma) and Paleo-Tethys (
320–260 Ma)
subduction coexisted with hemispherical
subduction belts that surrounded Pangaea
(Fig. 9), and how its hemisphere-girdling
subduction belts overlie the seismically
imaged circumpolar ring in the lower
mantle (Figs. 1A, B and 9). Any true polar
wander in response to changing subduction
would tend to rotate about the two
equatorial axes of the antipodal
superplumes, as has been observed for
30°
of true polar wander in the past 200 Myr
(Besse and Courtillot, 2002), and, more
weakly, earlier in time (Evans, 2003).
Subsequent plume activity in the
superplume region beneath the continent
62 3. Energetics of the Solid Earth: Implications for the Structure of Mantle Convection

FIG. 9 Global plate reconstructions from Domeier and Torsvik (2014) for 400, 360, 320, 280, and 260 Ma, with subduction
zones outlined in blue, and the “circumpolar great circle of downwelling” shown by the red circle at 180°. Lambert Azimuthal
equal-area projection with respective poles of projection at 52°S, 34°W; 40°S, 12°W; 30°S, 24°E; 10°S, 44°E; and 2°S, 48°E. Mod-
ifications by Le Pichon et al. (2019). The 1900-km depth S wave tomography map from Cottaar and Lekic (2016) with present
contours of continents overlain. Lambert Azimuthal equal-area projection with the pole of projection at 6°N, 4°E. Colors: red
_
for slow wavespeeds to blue for high wavespeeds. All figure panels from X. Le Pichon, A. M. C. Sengor, C. Imren, 2019. Pangea and
the lower mantle. Tectonics 38.

would preferentially heat the continental
base above this region, thereby triggering
episodic breakup (Le Pichon et al., 2019).
• In this framework, the Earth has a strong
geodynamo because of its strong surface heat
loss; plate-tectonics-linked subduction is able
to strongly cool the core-mantle boundary,
enough so that the highly conductive core can
convect to generate a geodynamo. Venus
would be predicted to also have a liquid core,
but insufficient core heat loss—due to its
lower surface cooling rates—and therefore no
Venusian core-convection-generated
dynamo.
• Heat loss from the Earth’s core may be
concentrated at the base of the
3000-km
wide circumpolar belt of descending mantle
(Bloxham and Gubbins, 1987). The fact that
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spin axis implies that slight wobbles in the
location of the spin axis linked to true polar
wander might influence the distribution of
core-cooling, and so influence the frequency
of magnetic reversals.
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